Ranma
by Kirinin
Summary: Ryoga has lost his two best friends. Now all he has is a legal pad full of notes, and a sparring session with someone who is not quite either of them. Sequel to... surprise, surprise... 'Akane'.


I got the idea for this drabble while sketching. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to draw Ranma or Akane at first; so the final result was a girl who looked very much like Akane, wearing an expression that belonged on Ranma's face. Between that, the story 'Akane' that I wrote an age ago (MAJOR spoilers for that, by the by) and a number of 'Doppelganger'-esque SGA fic I'd been reading, a plot bunny was born. If you haven't yet read 'Akane', please read it on my homepage rather than on ff-dot-net. Entire scenes are different.

Yay for angsty, Ryoga-POV AUs.

!Warnings! - slash if you squint, I suppose; strong friendship otherwise (I'm beginning to realize that this applies to more or less everything I write.) _Random italics_. Angsty and weird/experimental/stream-of-consciousness/potentially made of poo. Major spoilers for 'Akane'.

Oh, and – completely un-beta'd, and written about five moments ago, so don't shoot me.

* * *

Ranma

* * *

Her body slides fluidly from form to form, full of precision and grace and the barely-contained energy that always hisses _Ranma_, so he keeps a counterpoint for himself: _Akane – Akane – Akane – _with every move she makes. He does not allow himself to call her anything but Akane-san, even in his mind.

Nabiki watches (surreptitiously, he's sure she believes) from her bedroom window, down into the yard. Even three months ago, Ryoga would swear Nabiki were gathering evidence that the girl below is not her sister; but now he knows better. Nabiki, for all her cleverness, is still only a girl to whom family means a great deal. Nabiki is gathering evidence that the girl below is no one but Akane, because that is what she needs to believe. She is telling herself that there is no other possibility. She is calling herself ten kinds of fool for even entertaining her doubts.

Ryoga wishes her luck at it. When you're looking for disparities, they're not hard to find. He scribbles them absently on the yellow legal pad in his lap.

Akane has always loved martial arts, but now it is her life; she no longer merely adores it, she breathes it in and out every moment, and Genma can no longer surprise her. There's a new energy in each motion and a sweet crookedness to her smile; a way of placing a hand on one cocked hip and beckoning with her eyes to get what she wants, whether it is food, fighting, or affection.

_Ryoga has started forgetting that Akane could be any other way -- forgetting how Akane could be incredibly feminine sometimes, with bonnets and lace and bows, as though making up for (apologizing for?) the worn, sweaty yellow gi in which she spent her early mornings and late afternoons._

Akane now knows exactly how attractive she is, and uses it to good advantage, but she rarely bothers with the trappings of femininity unless she can't avoid it – Sayuri's debut with the local choral group, Kasumi's birthday. On these days she seems more graceful and beautiful and _natural_ than ever.

_Ryoga forgets her cruel, almost casual cluelessness when it came to him and his feelings; the way she sometimes seemed aware of his affection for her before allowing herself to forget it again. _

These days Akane is very cautious of him. It seems as though she is doing a strange shadow dance with him, where she follows only the moves he makes first, and her behaviour is anything but casual.

When you're looking for disparities, they're not hard to find. But Ryoga, watching the steadiness of her kata, her intent gaze, her furrowed brow, wonders if Akane isn't just a girl turning into the woman she might have become, in time: stronger, quieter, more secure but with her own, grown-up set of doubts and worries.

This certainty grows on him until the chronological line between Akane and Ranma seems to blur; did Akane say that to him before Jusenkyo, or after? Did Akane learn this move that summer, or later on? He rails against the loss, even as he sees it as inevitable. He realizes he is forgetting his two best friends.

He needs to preserve it, preserve them, so he starts writing it down; but he finds the details he can recall entirely unsatisfying: _Ranma slept with all four limbs in random, extended arrangements, like a starfish; Akane had a near-phobia of ladybugs; Ranma loved his mother more than anyone in the world._ Everything he knows, or guesses, everything he remembers – it doesn't amount to anything but a legal pad full of scribblings. It doesn't _mean _anything, somehow too much and not enough all at once.

Akane finishes her kata and strides over to him, her gait some strange mean of lope and stride. "Whatcha got there, Ryoga-kun?" she inquires brightly, hands loose and easy at her sides. "Still writing your memoirs?" For all her cheek, the words are spoken gently and solicitiously, as though she is trying to soothe a spooked horse.

He clutches the notebook protectively for a moment before sticking it in his pack. "Want to spar?"

His answer is a non-answer and she knows it; but she moves into position, anyway, shaking her limbs loose and giving him a hungry smile.

_Ryoga remembers watching her move amongst Kasumi's brightly wrapped birthday gifts, something bright and alive _missing _from her gaze. And when he stumbled outside, when she followed him, all polite, attentive concern, he could not seem to help clutching her to him and saying_ Ranma – Ranma – Ranma _– as though chanting could bring him back from behind Akane's eyes; even though that name is part of their shared lost vocabulary, along with the word _Jusenkyo.

_She pushed him back as if struck, dead-white in the moonlight. _

_He couldn't seem to stop the name tumbling from his lips, though – as though all the _Ranma_s he'd wanted to say had been stopped up behind some sort of wall and they had only just then broken through. _

All he can think of is that in trying to save one, he's lost them both.

Hush,_ she said, quiet, severe. She trembled in his grip, and finally, _I know – I _know. _

_Akane_, he tells himself as she slips into an Anything-Goes stance, fluid and easy again. This time he'll add the forbidden name: _Ranma_. And he'll repeat them both until he understands that she's both, that it's all right that she's both; and he'll stay with her until she understands it, too.

* * *

_Reviews are, as always, adored. Even if they say one of the following:_

1) Why haven't you written more of _Juketsuzoku Fu_?

2) Why haven't you written the sequel to _Secret of Slytherin _yet? And who is this Ryoga person anyway?

3) 'Experimental' equals 'crap'.

Thank you, and goodnight.


End file.
